Thornes House was a fine
Georgian mansion built in 1779-1782 for the James Milnes family by Horbury architect James
Carr.

It was arguably the
most imposing 18thC building in the city. It was one of only 27 buildings in the British
Isles to be included in the 1802 edition of "Vitruvius Brittanica" a regular
survey of the world's most important buildings by one George Richardson published
1802-1808.

In 1919 the estate was
put up for sale & bought by the Corporation for £18,500. The plans were to use 20
acres and the House for a school and use the remaining 92 acres to build an estate of 750
council houses. The Corporation badly needed the houses and it also needed the work for
the considerable numbers of local unemployed.

The Housing Commision,
however, would not approve the project so it eventually opened as a park on 2 August 1924.
The houses were built at Lupset later. Work was found for some of the unemployed who were
used to make the paddling pool, tennis courts & pathway at the Horbury Road end of the
park.

Meanwhile, the school
was founded in 1921 as separate boys & girls secondary schools which made use of
Wakefield Technical College for the first year. The schools then moved to the Thornes
House site in 1922.

In 1941 the two schools
were united under one headmaster and in 1944 the school became a Grammar School under the
new Education Act.

An old pupil recalls
"In one sense, because of the distance from home and a site in the centre of a very
large park of 112 acres - ten to fifteen minutes walk up either drive - one felt one
walked daily into a different world."

The school motto was
"In Fellowship", the school song was "O Brother Man", and the colours
were blue & gold.

Most of the original
house was destroyed by a fire in 1951 thanks possibly to the Wakefield Amateur Theatre
Guild which was storing costumes for their Thornes Park production of Midsummer Night's
Dream in a room in the school which was the seat of the fire according to the official
report. A dropped fag end among the costumes was given as a likely cause. But the present
new buildings were soon constructed & came into use in 1956.

Later changes resulted
in the school becoming, first, bi-lateral (grammar & technical) & then fully
comprehensive in 1972 changing its name to Thornes House High School. It lost its sixth
form in 1981 to a Sixth Form College. In 1992 it was proposed to merge it with the
Cathedral Middle School to form a Church High School on the Thornes Road site of the
former.

The Thornes House site
then became part of the Wakefield College which includes the Wakefield Arts Centre. The
Wakefield Athletic Centre is built on what used to be the football field & school
sports ground.